Fall Training

This is the time of year that requires the most focus as workouts get more demanding, rest becomes even more important (it is always important! more so now!) and so does showing up to every workout with the right attitude. This past week I was face with many tough challenges, first of all on monday, was a fitness test we do, a 4-5 km run at 140 heartrate, very easy test physically, as 140 heartrate is my usual training pace. As your fitness gets better you time should decrease, well this was the first week that my time went in the opposite direction, i was slightly slower, not necessary a bad thing, but mentally it was a little tough to swallow. but looking back at my past few weeks we have been doing more speed work, which will in turn slow down that test, not meaning I am getting slower, but meaning I am getting faster in other areas(trust me a good thing!).
Tuesday Morning was hard!! our team did our world famous (well maybe not world, but a lot of skiers in Canada know of it) Up hill running time trial. it takes around 25 minutes for me (my fastest) and I was also slightly slower, not enough to cry over, since fall has struck the coast here, someone has turned on a shower knob and changed our course, adding a few new rivers and making the trail pretty greasy!
Hard workout #3 sprint simulation, we used an uphill course in the Garibaldi estates area up towards Quest University. Well my efforts were some of the best I have put in this year ( I try to make each one better and better) I got a good workout, My skiing technique right now is what I would consider quite good, even though I have a long ways to go, I feel this is what held me in there with this session! I tend to like to lead sprints and it was frustrating to not be able to! After this workout rest was essential physically and mentally!
Workout #4, 6 hour run up Black Tusk mountain. Jesse and I ran a 6 hour run (photos to follow) and I can honestly say that this was the workout of the year easily, how often do you get sunny 15 degree celcius, get to run up a mountain(with tons of snow!) and back down from point A to point B (thanks for being patient with us Amy) who also ran with the girls for a total of 4.5 hours as well as shuttling the car from parking lot to parking lot!
All in all a great week! I just finished my morning heart rate test and I am rested and ready to head into a U23 world champs trial week simulation, racing the same races I will in January trying to qualify for the U23's.

I will keep you posted and try to add more pictures!
feel free to leave comments on anything I post up here!!!
until next time!


Chris